George Rebane
The Ft Hood shootings have left me shocked, saddened, and dismayed. But perhaps not in the way most of the country is reacting to this terrible news tonight from Texas. What is now known is that Major Malik Nadal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, methodically opened fire with two handguns in a troop processing hall where he killed twelve soldiers and wounded 31 more before being shot himself. He will survive.
It took some hours for the Army and media to reveal that the Major was a Muslim, during which hours the man’s name was known but not revealed. Then it came to light that the killer (I don’t have to use any of this ‘alleged’ stuff to belabor the known and verified) was born and raised here in an American Muslim family. He was commissioned through the Virginia Tech ROTC program and seemed to all outside observers to be flying hot, true, and normal in the progress of his Army career. Normal, that is, until he began to voice Islamic sentiments to his colleagues about American foreign policy and military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then he decided to sacrifice himself as the assassin of unsuspecting innocents he had sworn to defend with his life.
How do I chew and digest all this information in light of what I have learned, and what has been reported to us about the resurgence of radicalized militant Islam and its global objectives? I must look at it through the only lens I have. For good or ill, I am a child, student, and defender of western civilization. It’s in my double helix.
I also spent my turn manning the ramparts of our country (First Lieutenant, Artillery, retired), and then more years designing its weapons of war. This experience has made a lasting impression on me and others similarly blessed. It served to grind my lens.
The Reverend Thomas Bayes (1702 – 1761) is best remembered for giving mankind the means to correctly incorporate new and uncertain observations/knowledge into an existing belief system. Today the Bayes Theorem underpins everything from moon landings, GPS, medical technology, worldwide communications, financial investments, internet search, optimal emergency response strategies, genetic engineering, interpretation of data, diagnostics, automated reasoning (artificial intelligence), and more areas than can be enumerated here. Without Bayes, we would not recognize our world.
Bayesian analysis also supports enquiries into such problems as ‘given the data from the Ft Hood shootings, how should we deal with Muslims in our military?’ Unfortunately, our culture has now weaned itself of both the will and wisdom to address defense of culture issues. We cannot even formulate the question for a discussion in the public media. It is simply out of the new bounds we have set for ourselves.
Consider this, Major Hasan had no other distinguishing attributes that may have predicted his killing spree, save that he was a discontent Muslim in an advanced 21st century culture, the very existence of which gives lie to most of Islam’s deepest teachings.
Islam is undoubtedly the world’s most powerful religion or belief system. What other religion today can motivate so many of its adherents to willingly sacrifice themselves with utter finality in the practice of terror against anyone not sharing their specific beliefs? What is your negotiating basis with someone whose reward is not of this world? Christians don’t have a leg to stand on, and secular humanists – especially of the politically correct stripe – don’t even understand the problem.
So, here was an American military officer who had taken the most solemn and serious oath to defend his homeland against all enemies, and who appeared engaged in perfectly normal activities that fulfilled that oath. And then, without warning, he violates that oath in the most terrible and egregious manner. Is there any possible defense against the recurrence of this scenario?
Depending on what utility we assign to a successful defense, the Reverend Bayes would counsel that we can indeed defend ourselves, not with certainty, but close enough for government work. But the parade of spread-eagled, white-haired grandmothers at our airport security checkpoints testifies that the good Reverend’s legacy is banished from such enquires, let alone applications, in today’s America.
Our politics will not allow us a reasonable defense. But docking more freedoms and liberties of the whole, in order to defend against the few, is our government’s forte. As the perfect trifecta – it addresses the problem, makes everyone aware that government is out there defending us, and quietly ratchets back freedoms that prepare us for the brave new world. We never even think to look behind the curtain.
